CJ | Studio Terranova

Happy Late New Year

2026-02-08T00:00:00Z

Our New Year's newsletter is out! Thank you for your patience, everyone.

Here's an excerpt:

mabbees and I started Studio Terranova with a dream—to make a workplace that would serve community more than capital. We're burnt out tech workers that found a lot of love and community in the indie game community.

To that end, a worker-owned game co-operative just made sense.

Last year, we had to remind ourselves a lot of that dream—like a lot of folks, we were waylaid by both visa and financial instability that terrified us. We spent a lot of time reading about our rights, filling out paperwork and advocating for ourselves.

But we're still here. We are so grateful to our supporters and community. Because of a mix of client contracts and your support, we were able to survive.

We are also beyond burnt out.

We hope in 2026 to re-center our creative work and community to re-energize us.

Here's to the new year, where we are more tired than ever, but like hell if we're going to give up!

Read the rest of January's newsletter on Buttondown.

See all posts tagged Tech and Web.

ガラスでピコンを作ってみた

2025-12-30T00:00:00Z

2025年の最後のPicotachi 78にて、5分のトーク程度のトークを行いました。Picotachi（月列）は、ゲームクリエイター・アーティスト・ミュージシャンが、創作途中の作品（Work‑In‑Progress）とプロセスについて気軽に共有する会です。

当初は PICO‑8 のプロジェクトに関するトークでしたが、今は色々なドット絵、さらにはレトロゲームやアート作品も交えて紹介します。今年からピコピコカフェが再開したこともあり、できるだけPicotachiなどにも参加していきたいと思います。

以下のスライドは、Picotachi 78のトーク内容をまとめたものです。

English version is here.

東京のインディーズゲームシーンで、「ゲーム開発者」兼「GGJ（Global Game Jam）のオーガナイザー」として知られている私ですが、別の場面でトークしたいと思いました。2020年から趣味でガラス彫刻を制作しています。主に恐竜を作っていますが、今回は「Devlog」風にガラス彫刻について話したいと思います。

先月のPicotachiで、ピコピコカフェのオーナーらが、「ピコン」と呼ばれる可愛いマスコットの新デザインを紹介しました。（元々のピコンは、しっぽがありましたが、新デザインはしっぽがなくなり、変身した形です。）

「うわー、可愛いすぎる！」と感動しました。

深い理由はありませんが、「楽しさ」や「作者がきっと喜んでくれるだろう」と思い、挑戦してみました。

様々な形で試行錯誤しながら学んだ結果、ガラス彫刻を作る際は工程の順序が重要だと分かりました。そのため、ピコンの体を「頭・真ん中・足」の 3 部に分けたデザインにしました。

吹きガラスやガラス彫刻の経験者はあまり多くないので、イメージしにくいかもしれません。そこで、想像しやすくなるようイラストを追加しました。

まず、重曹で泡を作ります。「釜」と呼ばれる約 1000 度ほどの高温ガラスを棒で巻き、そこに重曹を付けて再び巻きます。重曹が付いた部分で泡が生じます。

それから、真ん中の形を整えます。

しかし、なぜ真ん中なのか？普通は頭が先だと思われますよね。

実は！！

逆に考えると、棒の先端が頭になり、足はガラスの先端になるので、真ん中は変わりません。真ん中は最も焼きにくい部分なので、ここから作業を始めるのは自然です。

「釜」全体で見ると、最も冷めやすいのは真ん中です。

なるほど！

直接ガラスに触れるのは危険です。鉄製のピンサーを使って、ガラスを引き出します。

足としっぽは、このように形作ります。

これが最も難しかった工程です。作品だけでは分かりませんが、何度も作り直し、かなり焦っていました。._.

理由は？

安定性が不足するとすぐに倒れてしまいます。倒れると壊れてしまうからです。ピコンはしっぽがあれば 3 点で立てられますが、しっぽがないので、どう立たせるか悩んでいました。

挑戦したいとは思いましたが、かなり難しいです！

結局「立つ」形は諦めて、「座る」形にしました。

最後は頭です！竿から「ポンテ」と呼ばれる部品に取り替えて、頭を作ります。

足としっぽと同じ、頭も少しずつ引っ張り出して形を整えました。頭を作ると同時に、体全体が少し伸びました。

目を作るために細長いガラス棒を加熱し、ペンのように直接ガラスに描くことができます。彫刻を作る前に、目の練習をしました。

（1 回巻いて、棒で多数の目を付けるイメージです。）

ガラスでガラスに描くのが個人的に好きなので、今回が一番楽しかったです（笑）。

単純な形でも、目を付けるだけでキャラクターらしくなります！

この季節は寒いので、ピコン用のスカーフも作りました。風をひかないで、ピコン！

ガラス彫刻の作り方、だいたい想像できましたか？

詳しく知りたい方には、吹きガラスの基礎を扱う「キープセンター」（中心を取る）というビデオゲームを作っています。日本語版・英語版がありますので、ぜひプレイしてみてください！

（日本語は母語ではないので、誤りがあればメールまたはコメントで教えてください。修正します！）

どうぞよろしくお願いいたします。

すべての記事を見る。

Picotachi 78: Making Picon in Glass

2025-12-30T00:00:00Z

Picotachi 78 was the final Picotachi of 2025. Picotachi is a monthly meetup of game creators, artists and musicians that share their process and work in progress in short, five-minute talks.

Initially, the meetup was born from fans of the fantasy console PICO-8 and consisted of projects from there, but it attracts pixel artists, retro developers and artists. This year, Pico Pico Café reopened, and with it, the chance to connect with other game devs. As much as I can, I try to participate in Picotachi events.

Below is the English translation of the short talk I gave at Picotachi 78.

日本語版はこちら。

I'm known in the local Tokyo gamedev scene mostly as a game developer and organizer of Global Game Jam, but I want to show folks a different side of me. I started blowing glass in 2020, and have evolved my art into making sculptures. I'll be giving this talk "devlog-style" - except I won't be talking about a game, I'll be talking about sculpting in glass.

At last month's Picotachi, the owner of Pico Pico Café introduced a "new design" of her character for the café, Picon. (The original character had a tail, but this Picon is tail-less.)

I was so charmed when I saw her new design. So cute!

There wasn't a terribly deep reason for making Picon in glass, mostly that I thought it would be fun and make its creator happy - who doesn't love fanart of their OC?

From what I've learned in trying out different forms, in glass sculpture the most important thing to pay attention to is the order in which you make each of the parts. That's why when designing the glass piece I sketched out Picon and divided them into three parts, the head, the middle, and the feet.

There's not a lot of folks out there who have done glassblowing before, so it's a bit hard to visualize if I describe the process solely in words. That's why I've drawn out the process on each of these slides.

First, I made the bubbles in the piece by sprinkling baking soda on hot glass. I take glass out of the furnace at about 1000 degrees Celsius, put a little baking soda on it, and take another glass pull. The glass is constantly rotating on a steel or aluminum pole called a blowpipe.

First, I make the middle part of the sculpture.

"Wait...why the middle?" you might ask. In general, when we think about focal points for sculpture, it's the head first, right?

Actually!

If we flip our thinking around, the tip of the blowpipe is actually the head, and the tip of the ball of glass will become the feet. The middle part, as opposed to the head and feet, is the hardest to heat, so I started with that first.

If I were to show you a bird's eye view of the furnace, you'd see that the front of the furnace is colder than the back. This means it's easier to reheat the feet than the middle. I start with the middle and then work my way back to the feet.

We'll get to the head later.

I see!

Hot glass cannot be touched directly, so I use steel pincers to pull out the arms and legs and shape them.

This is also how I make the "tail" nubbin and legs.

In truth...this part was the hardest. It may not look like it in the finished piece, but I struggled a lot with the legs. ._.

Why?

Another important consideration in creating sculptures is the structural stability of the piece. Picon, as I mentioned before, went from having a tail, which would ground it at three points (leg, leg, tail) to only two points (leg, leg). This means that the piece can easily fall over and break.

I said I wanted to challenge myself, and this definitely was a challenge!

In the end, I gave up on Picon standing on two legs and made the snap decision to have them sit down.

Last was the head! I stuck another rod to Picon's base (or "butt") called the punty and broke it off the blowpipe so I could work on the head.

Just like the legs and "tail" of Picon, I pulled out the head slowly with pincers. When I pulled out the head from the form, it stretched a bit.

For the eyes, I used a long and thin piece of glass and fused it to the piece. Prior to making this piece, I did a "practice" piece where I fused about ten or so eyes to a glass ball just to make sure I didn't mess this up.

(When drawing on glass, if you mess up you have to cut the glass off the piece, which can damage the face.)

I like drawing on glass with glass, so this was the funnest part for me! (laughs)

Especially when a glass piece has a face, it really gives it personality, don't you think?

Because it's December and I didn't want Picon to catch a cold, I made them a scarf.

So, what do you think? Were you able to visualize my process?

If you're interested in learning more about glassblowing, I made a game in English and Japanese about the fundamentals of glassblowing called Keep Center. Please take a look!

Thanks for listening, and I hope it sparked an interest in glass art.

See you next time!

See all posts tagged Glassblowing.

A solo art walk

2025-12-26T00:00:00Z

My glassblowing teacher introduced me to the Kurokawa Satoyama Art Project, a group that organizes an art walk in Kawasaki in November. They blend sculptural ceramics, glass, and metal into the natural scenery. I’d been sick most of November, so was pleased to catch it on the last day.

Life in the suburbs of Tokyo is accented by seasons of exchange; someone has too much such-and-such in their backyard—would you like some? The time of the year is kaki - feral persimmons sag laden with orange fruit against a blue sky. Women carry paper bags so full of them they defy their square shape.

Kurokawa is on the edge of the suburbs. The 3.8km art walk is through parks and backwoods that are transformed every year into a sculpture garden. I am given a map explaining where to find each of the sculptures and the hunt begins.

For today, I’ve put aside my rational brain and transported myself into a gauzy fantasy world that combines nature and art seamlessly. Sculptures reflect on the coexistence of the organic and inorganic. I find my teacher’s dangling glass plates that reflect just right as to be both barely visible and otherworldly.

This time last year there was a Christmas wreath making workshop in the park. There are no shrieks of children but it is bustling with activity. A kindly older man asks me in English where I'm from. I answer. After a few moments of silence, he says suddenly, "I don't get art. If there's no explanation, how do you understand it?"

"I don't think it needs an explanation," I reply. We both crane our necks to look at a ten-foot tall elliptical tower constructed from tree branches. It was a group project from the local Kurokawa art school; the plaque displays their names. "Sometimes it's enough for them to know for you to love it.”

I imagine the students spending weekends together weaving the tree branches and my heart is full.

A number of artists’ works pay tribute to Palestinians—grieving the terrible loss alongside their fellow humans and relaying a hope for regrowth, for small moments of happiness amidst atrocity.

I reflect on an interview from a Palestinian poet I heard on a podcast two years ago:

“There’s a beautiful saying in Arabic... “the remainder is in your life.” It is a saying that believes in the continuum of memory and the life force. What we do is sharing the remainder of the lives of those who have been lost.”

The life force pulses through these works.

In the backwoods, I weave through fields of vegetables, and notably, momiji trees that are being grown to transplant into shrines or backyards. It looks like the green room of a play; the trees are huddled close together, not yet ready for their debut. There's a sense of wonder in the air. It has been a long time since I've felt that.

This year I've adopted a poisonous mindset around wonder; that it is a luxury afforded only to those who live carefree lives. I've been too busy focusing on the real news—that is, what is happening in the US.

To quote Adolus Huxley:

“No man can concentrate his attention upon evil, or even upon the idea of evil, and remain unaffected. To be more against the devil than for God is exceedingly dangerous. Every crusader is apt to go mad. He is haunted by the wickedness which he attributes to his enemies; it becomes in some sort a part of him.”

I am afraid this wickedness has become a part of me. I can more clearly articulate what I hate than what I love. I hate violence and cruelty. I hate inaction in the face of injustice—the uncaring, always-turning gears of the political, patriarchal, colonialist and capitalist system.

I don't live in the US and feel guilty. Since the start of the pandemic, the gap between my lived experiences and my friends and family in the US has widened significantly.

I hate my own sense of helplessness.

Japan is no "golden" country—it has very little, if not underground support for transgender folks and does not have same-sex marriage.

Since transitioning on paper, I have spent a majority of my year meeting the dreaded Japanese bureaucracy system head-on, numbing the pain and pulling myself into an objective frame of mind to articulate "what is currently wrong" and "how can this be fixed" so that I can gain allies with logic. This has had the long-term effect of numbing my ability to feel joy. I am functional, yes, but I have lost my ability to live.

A nearby tree is adorned with glass sculptures; crystals jutting from the bark as if they naturally grew. I take a picture; then put my phone away and linger by the tree, trying to recreate the memory in my mind for later.

"Do you want a sweet potato?" a farmer interrupts from the road. “It's 100 yen."

"Really?" I say, "I'll take five."

The confusion on her face says something went awry. "You want...four bags?" she asks. "That's a lot of potatoes." I flush. "Oh no, one bag is fine!"

The potatoes are freshly harvested and caked with dirt. I smile. "Wow!"

"You're pretty excited about them," she remarks with a smile. It's clear I'm playing the role of the naïve city slicker—wow, 100 yen for potatoes!—but I lean in to the stereotype. "I am excited. I love sweet potatoes."

I surprise myself with this admission. It seems silly, but I do. “Thank you!"

The art walk ends in an outdoor café; as the sun lingers over the horizon, I feel no guilt in the pleasure I savor in the afternoon stillness and aroma of coffee. I love solitude, too. These walking dates I take myself on are some of the most prized jewels I can make of my time. They remind me of the present, of who I am, who I love, and what I yearn for.

The present sun is setting.

I am a tired, but happy queer person.

I love my partner, our animals, making things, books and sweet potatoes.

I yearn to feel again.

My fellow outdoor gallery-goer asked how he could understand art if it had no explanation. It is not the point of all art to come with an explanation. Things understood with the mind can be explained, but things felt with the heart escape words. Articulating and understanding what has gone wrong helps me decide what to do next, but it does not help me grieve or heal, or feel joy.

I read Devon Price's "Laziness Does Not Exist" in October and it's taken a month for me to truly put my understanding into practice. There are so many barriers to savoring happiness and slowing down. Especially when going through a hard time, I don't want to remember things. I don't want to remember most of this year.

But going through a hard time and savoring the good moments are not mutually exclusive. No one makes it out of this life alive. Why not spend our time savoring the good?

Escaping explanation, I feel, for the first time in a long time, rested.

See all posts tagged Art.

Spooky Stylin out Now!

2025-11-03T00:00:00Z

This Halloween, I'm thrilled (pun intended) to announce the launch of our super special minigame, Spooky Stylin’ — available for free as part of Dollmaker Jam!

The sixth game in our Tomodachi 8-in-1 collection, this game will take you back to those late 90s, early 00s evenings spent meticulously crafting an avatar to use on LiveJournal, AIM, or MSN Messenger—but extra spooky!

Mix and match your headgear, hairstyle, tops, and bottoms to dress up your avatar!

7 outfits to choose from, allowing for over 300 potential combinations!
Really cute pixel art, if we do say so ourselves! (mabbees and I did it ourselves)
Take photos of your character in the game and share them on social media!

I'm super grateful for our community that’s always stuck around, and for their kind words of support for the little piece of universe we’ve created. As with other games in Tomodachi 8-in-1, this fun digital nostalgia is a glimpse of what Tourmaline, Ephemeral Smile, Cherry, and Sendaria would have enjoyed in their days, and I hope you, too, will enjoy it as much as they did.

Check out Spooky Stylin' (free)

Get the whole bundle of games for $3

See all posts tagged Video Games.

Reading: Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price

2025-10-02T00:00:00Z

Kelly Turnbull made a dark joke on Twitter that they assumed they would die at 35, so didn't think too much about working long hours during crunch time as an animator. (I wish I had the direct quote, but Twitter has become unsearchable.)

Instead of being shocked and sad, I found myself nodding. I never saw myself living long. Many of my family members had already passed under unnatural circumstances before I was in my mid twenties. I used to call it family curse. My parents laughed it off—I continued to believe.

It was exacerbated by my peers' lack of understanding what "over 35" looked like; associating as a teen with anyone older than me was seen as dangerous. I had no template of middle-age beyond my family members who I saw infrequently.

Pictured: Auron from Final Fantasy X, my main representation of what over 30 looked like. He's 32.

That's what made my hyper-anxious, hyper-productivity so personal; I didn't have time left, I never had time, so I had to do as much as possible, experience as much as possible before I finally kicked it. Devon Price's book Laziness Does Not Exist hit me right in that sore spot—the one where I use productivity as a salve to ease my own anxieties about relationships, the world, and a fundamental detachment from my physical body due to dysphoria.

The premise is this—that particularly people born in the U.S. are suffering from a cultural malaise called the "Laziness Lie"—a lie that states your worth is measured only in your productivity, that you cannot trust your body and your feelings, and that there is always more that you could be doing.

It has its roots in American Christian Puritanism which claimed those who are the hardest workers are the ones God chose for salvation. Over time, the message became detached from religion and embedded in common sayings—"to pull yourself up by your bootstraps" or "having grit" or "putting in blood, sweat and tears" are seen as positive traits in the U.S.

That is not to say that these are solely U.S. concepts—overwork is common in Japan, although it's usually attributed to toxic workplaces than largescale societal and social pressure. Most folks I know here who overwork "are forced" to and know it is illegal but have little power to fight back, rather than Americans, who say they "should" and self-police their productivity.

This poisonous "should" was something I had to unlearn when living abroad. People look at you funny when you talk about "side gigs" that make money, because most folks don't do side gigs for the money. They do it because they enjoy it which is an absolutely normal way of thinking about hobbies. It highlights how abnormal the way folks from the U.S. talk to their kids about their hobbies. As a young creative growing up in the States, I could never escape this talk.

"You're so good you could open an etsy store!"
"Have you thought about going full-time?"
"Do you take commissions?"

There was so much in this book that I could talk about, but I'll try to focus on one aspect of it: how much I appreciated the tactical advice it gave targeted specifically for people like me whose calendars are packed months in advance and who don't think about "rest" as anything more than a passing thought. Worse, it becomes yet another "should" pressuring me: I really should rest.

Fuck you, "restful" Instagram

Amongst queer spaces it's popular for folks to share twee, pastel memes of cute animals resting. As a chronic workaholic, I despise these memes. I don't dislike the people sharing them—I'm sure it does something for them, but the cartoon animals that remind me to "rest" without telling me "how" and my brain is so tired and overworked that it feels like they're mocking me.

"Refill your water bottle!" a cute whale shark burbles at me at 1AM while I'm working on a proposal.

I'm working at 1AM on a proposal because my day was full of meetings from 8AM to 8PM; I took some time to hang out with my partner in the evening time, and in the middle of that my ADHD brain realized I had a deadline today I'd forgotten about. The software that I'm using to draft the proposal is under through maintenance, so instead of auto-calculating prices, I have to hand-calculate them.

Fuck you, whale shark. My water bottle is refilled and I'm still suffering.

I've had similar issues with "mindfulness meditations" — sitting still has never been my strong suit, and so when I find myself in these meditations, if body movement isn't involved I find myself tidying up or working on a project five minutes into the meditation. Oops.

Dampening Happiness versus Savoring Happiness

Instead, Devon suggests an alternative way—learning how to reframe what is valuable in life and how to tactilely savor things. I find this far easier for me to disgest and less insulting than general advice. He explains, "when a person savors, they relish the things they love and devote their full attention to experiencing them in a mindful, appreciative way...By discouraging us from showing any signs of weakness and vulnerability, the Laziness Lie teaches us to engage in suppression, the hiding of signs of happiness in order to appear serious or mature."

"The Laziness Lie also loves keeping us distracted; as overachieving workaholics, we're all expected to multitask all day long; never taking a moment to fully luxuriate in a good meal, a golden sunset, or a leisurely walk around the block."

I felt these words to my bones. So often I'd experience a moment so emotional I'd suppress it; or was so distracted I couldn't fully appreciate it. Looking back on it I'd point out some good things but mostly focus on the things that I could change—which was also another negative mental pattern that kept me exhausted and unhappy. I was thoroughly called out.

As an alternative, he suggests being fully present—that is—really drinking in the details of a good experience. I found parallels to this in their passage on active reading: learning to visualize what is being read, clarify and dive into the "what" of each passage, and connect the writing to things that you already know helps their students more actively read and retain information. The same can be said for moments as well. When remembering a good memory, I've recently found myself wondering:

What does this memory smell like?
What sounds can I hear?
What were the words I heard that really touched my heart?

These questions I've found to be much better goalposts for practicing mindfulness than simply, "take your meds, hydrate, be mindful."

Laziness Does Not Exist hit me at a very critical moment; after my sabbatical in 2023 I threw myself immediately into starting a business and succumbed to the Laziness Lie. And with good reason, too—building a business, and in particular, a worker-owned cooperative is difficult. There are deadlines on taxes and salary payments that cannot be "pushed back." Money is something that pays our bills, and if we don't have it, we lose a lot of financial freedom. Much of what mabbees and I are navigating right now is not something that has any infrastructure or support in Japan—that is, establishing a financially stable video game cooperative.

In addition to doing the thing, we have to do research on our own, trust our intuitions and find the people who are willing to support our business as both foreign-owned in Japan and a cooperative. Much of what we have built is either with the help of communities that are willing to reach across the world internationally or we just have to do it alone. We don't have much of a choice. In this atmosphere, I think it's easy to overwork. We've already come far as a studio and continue to grow and rely on support from fans and other co-operatives to survive.

And me, I'm past 35. I made it. Sadly, I do not have a cool sword like Auron. And unsurprisingly, I have a stress-related illness from putting myself under pressure for so long. But, in general, good health is something I thankfully have at the moment.

Which means that now I'm looking in front of me wondering, if I'm still here, what is the most meaningful and happiest way for me to live?

See all posts tagged LGBTQ.

A Birthday Letter, 2025

2025-09-14T00:00:00Z

Content warning: contains talk of suicide.

This is an ongoing series of letters I write to someone who is no longer here. She took her own life in 2014. I didn't speak to anyone about it for six years. In 2020, following another tragic suicide of a close family member, I realized I needed to externalize something or else I would be consumed with grief, so started writing these letters.

It is highly personal. These letters help me process my grief, which follows no linear or rational form. I hope that by publishing them I'll encourage other people who are going through something similar to talk about it, write about it, or make something beautiful with it.

I have conflicting feelings about my last letter in 2022.

It is unkind to speak ill of the dead. And yet, the dead were alive once; joyful and comforting and messy and angry and depressed. There were other people besides me who knew you—the picture wasn't always rosy. It took me a year to get over our relationship because of some of the awful things you said and did to me at the end. When you didn't feel in control, you had a habit of accusing people of doing things they didn't do and feeling things they didn't feel. I found out later it wasn't just me.

I was naïve and believed that you saw some monster in me I couldn't see myself. Knowing that someone I trusted hurt me was too much to bear, so I turned the poison inwards. The damage I did to myself took far longer than a year to undo—and is still unravelling, piece by piece.

I don't forgive you for leaving.

It's awful to be left alone. To have to painstakingly kill any hope of saying the right words, someone coming "just in time" to save you, or a future where we meet and hang out again, laughing compassionately at our cringey teenage selves. I understand you were depressed for several years, and I don't doubt that they were extremely painful. But selfishly—if I can speak selfishly for a moment—I've had to process these feelings of sadness, guilt and anger for eighteen years so far, and will for the rest of my life.

It's not just me you left here. It's your friends and family. Each year they post on your Facebook wall, I feel a twinge of anger at how you could leave them. They love you so much. They didn't want you to go. They still loved you even if never called or said terrible things to them.

People forgive. They move on. They forget about small stuff. That's the beauty of memory. And even if they do remember, and even if they don't forgive you, do you really think they want you erased?

No.

I longed for the picture-perfect version where we were in love (once) and split (amicably) and stayed (close) friends. I wrote that fiction to heal myself. It helped me face the reality that you weren't perfect—far from it—and as much as everything above is true, it is also true we spent a lot of intimate time together confessing our secrets to one another. I loved that intimacy. I still love it. I crave it with every romantic or platonic encounter I have: to stay up late working on something that means the world to us.

I was majorly depressed. I tried to leave it all behind a few times. Walking myself back from suicidal thoughts sucked because having to reconnect in a world that I'd been disconnected from for a while feels like looking for water in the desert. Since then, I've lived through two other people close to me committing suicide.

I'm so grateful to my family who pulled me back. To my friends who, when I didn't have the words to talk about how much I was suffering, just sat with me with a hand on mine. It took me years to feel stable enough to confidently say I really do like being alive. I like living in this body, on this Earth. There's a lot of shit wrong with it, but I like it here, still.

I'm sad that the voices that told you to do it were louder than the love you felt in that moment. I never wanted that for you or for anyone. It was too soon. You had so much more life to live. I wish you'd seen that.

2020's Birthday Letter is here.

2022's Birthday Letter is here.

The National Suicide Prevention Hotline in the U.S. is 1–800–273–8255.

TELL Japan provides a helpline support in Japan in English at 03–5774–0992.

If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of depression or suicide, call. There's people out there that want to see you again. Love you, and stay safe.

PICOJAM 2025 After Report

2025-09-08T00:00:00Z

PICOJAM graphic done by CYANSTAR.

日本語版はこちら。

Thank you for your patience while I wrote up this after-report—August was busy!

PICOJAM was a PICO-8 only hackathon (also known as a game jam) held at Pico Pico Café in Kichijoji from Aug. 9th-10th this year. Our jam themes were 「溶ける」or MELT, and 「祭り」or MATSURI. We had ten participants and made six games and two free PICO-8 asset packs, one for pixel art and another for music.

Thank you to zep for having us at the Pico Pico Café, and a huge thank you to everyone who participated! 🎆

See our games on itch.io here.

What is PICO-8?

PICO-8 is a fantasy console that is for making, sharing and playing tiny games. Games are in 8-bit 2D and the engine includes a code editor, a sprite maker, a map editor, and a music/SFX maker all in one. It’s based in Lua and has a forum of sweet and dedicated fans. Notably, Matt Thorston and Noel Berry’s Celeste and shoma’s MOTION REC were originally made in PICO-8.

There’s a lot of reasons why PICO-8 is fun to develop in; it has so many design constraints that a lot of decisions are already made for you. Open Unreal Engine and you may marvel at the switches for hours—but in PICO-8 you can start making a game the moment it boots up.

How did PICOJAM happen?

I was originally introduced to PICO-8 while organizing Global Game Jam (GGJ). I’m a fan of engines that have very low “start up cost” like Twine and Bitsy, since I prototype game mechanics quick and dirty first, and then build from that. After I made my first game in it, I was sold.

Some time later, I happened to run into another PICO-8 fan, uchuzine, and he invited me to a regular meetup where PICO-8 fans would show off the games we made and chat over dinner. Naturally, being indie devs our work is very solitary, so we wondered—how about we do a weekend hackathon? And what better time to do it than August, a month where we’d all rather be inside, anyway?

I helped organize and run it; and it was a blast.

Enough setup! Show me the games!

With pleasure! If you play the games and like them, please comment on them and show the creators some love.

hanabi-shi

A game about designing fireworks. Play around with weight, life, and color to design your own delightful fireworks.

Theme: MATSURI

Created by: hiko, shoma

Play on itch.io

Taiko Terror

You are a bug on a taiko drum—try to stay in the hit circle long enough to score points—but don't get squashed!

Theme: MATSURI

Created by: ugokuware, illuminesce, mabbees

Play on itch.io | Play on the BBS

PICOGORI 2025

Make shaved ice for animals at the festival! (there's no ending! you just make shaved ice forever.)

Theme: MATSURI

Created by: davemakes, npckc, mabbees

Play on itch.io | Play on the BBS

OMATSURI TD

This is a tower defense game to liven up a festival! The range of aroma differs depending on the shop. Preferences also vary by age (child/adult) and gender (male/female).

Theme: MATSURI

Created by: uchuzine, npckc, mabbees

Play on itch.io | Play on the BBS

Anxiety Festival

Some friends invited you to the local festival, but you don't really like crowds! Avoid strangers, find your friends, then find a place where you can enjoy the festival in peace.

Theme: MATSURI

Created by: caranha, CornetTheory

Play on itch.io | Play on the BBS

Bernie Visits the Wax Museum

Bernie Cinders is a young fireball who enjoys toasting marshmallows, playing in dry leaves, and visiting the wax museum.

Theme: MELT

Created by: zep

Play on the BBS

mabbees made a lot of music for this jam—he has a more in-depth blog post about his process here. He released the songs he made in a free asset pack you can use for your Matsuri-themed PICO-8 games—or other engines of choice.

Download Matsuri Music here

I didn't have a lot of mental space to contribute, being the organizer, but at the final hour I thought—dammit, I want to make something fun and ended up making a huge free asset pack with 8-bit jams and matsuri foods—get it? for jams haha.

Feel free to use them in your non-commercial projects!

Download MATSURI // JAM 8x8 Pixel Art here

Let's do it again!

I was really happy with the jam overall. People had fun, made a ton of creative games, and made new connections. It's the kind of space I look to create; where people feel comfortable and vulnerable and silly enough to play around and make new connections.

I've been itching to make a series of posts—or a zine even—about running game jams specifically in Tokyo. I've learned a lot about organizing in a place where venue space is at a premium, how to connect people who wouldn't otherwise talk with each other together and how to mix languages without solely relying on English. I wonder if anyone would be interested in something like that?

Thank you again to everyone who participated! It was fun, and I'm excited to do something like that again.

See all posts tagged Organizing.

PICOJAM 2025 アフターレポート

2025-09-08T00:00:00Z

CYANSTAR がPICOJAMの宣伝画像を制作してくれました。

English version is here.

レポートが遅くなってしまい、申し訳ありません！ 8月はとても忙しかったです。

PICOJAM は、PICO‑8 のみで作るハッカソン（ゲームジャム）で、吉祥寺の Pico Pico Café にて8月9日〜10 日に開催されました。テーマは 「溶ける」 と 「祭り」 の 2 つ。参加者は 10 名、作品はゲーム 6 本と無料の PICO‑8 アセットパック（ピクセルアート 1 個、音楽 1 個）の 2 点でした。

zep さん、Pico Pico Café を貸してくださりありがとうございました。そして、参加してくれた皆さん、本当に感謝でございます！ 🎆

Jam のエントリーは itch.io でこちらからご覧いただけます。

PICO‑8 とは？

PICO‑8 は、プチゲームを作ってシェアし、遊べる「ファンタジーコンソール」です。画面はドット絵、そしてPICO-8ではコード・スプライトメーカー・マップエディタ・音楽・SFXがひとつに統合されています。Luaで開発し、熱心なコミュニティが支えています。代表的な作品としては、Matt Thorston と Noel Berry の Celeste や、shoma の MOTION REC が挙げられます。

PICO‑8 が楽しい理由は、制約が多いほど創造性が刺激される ことです。例えば、Unreal Engine では設定項目が山ほどありますが、PICO‑8 では開けた瞬間からすぐにゲーム制作を始められます。

PICOJAM はどうやって実現したの？

私は Global Game Jam（GGJ）で PICO‑8 に初めて触れました。Twine や Bitsy のように「立ち上げコスト」が低いツールが好きで、まずはプロトタイプを手軽に作り、そこから本格化するスタイルが合っていました。最初の作品を作った時にすっかり虜になりました。

その後、別の PICO‑8 ファン uchuzine と出会い、定例ミーティングで作品を披露しながら食事を共にするようになりました。インディーズ開発者は孤独になりがちなので、「週末にみんなで集まってハッカソンをやってみない？」 と自然に話が広がり、季節的にも屋内で過ごしたい 8 月がピッタリだと思いました。

私が企画・運営を担当し、結果は大成功！楽しかったです。

さあ、ゲームをご紹介いたしまーす！

ぜひプレイしてみて、感想や応援コメントをクリエイターに送ってください。

hanabi‑shi

お祭りの花火をデザインします。重さ・寿命・色を調整して、オリジナルの花火を作りましょう。

テーマ：「祭り」

制作者： hiko、shoma

itch.io でプレイ

Taiko Terror

太鼓の上を這うバグになり、ヒットサークルに長く留まって得点を稼ぎます。ただし、叩き潰されないように注意！

テーマ：「祭り」

制作者： ugokuware、illuminesce、mabbees

itch.io でプレイ | Lexaloffle BBS でプレイ

PICOGORI 2025

祭りで動物たちにかき氷を提供します。（エンディングはなく、ずっとかき氷を作り続けます）

テーマ：「祭り」

制作者： davemakes、npckc、mabbees

itch.io でプレイ | Lexaloffle BBS でプレイ

OMATSURI TD

祭りの屋台を守るタワーディフェンスです。香りの範囲は店ごとに異なり、年齢（子ども／大人）や性別（男性／女性）でも好みが変わります。

テーマ：「祭り」

制作者： uchuzine、npckc、mabbees

itch.io でプレイ | Lexaloffle BBS でプレイ

Anxiety Festival

友達に誘われて祭りに行くものの、人混みが苦手…？見知らぬ人を避けて仲間を探し、静かな場所でゆっくり過ごすことが目的です。

テーマ：「祭り」

制作者： caranha、CornetTheory

itch.io でプレイ | Lexaloffle BBS でプレイ

Bernie Visits the Wax Museum

若い炎の玉「Bernie Cinders」は、マシュマロを焼いたり、乾いた葉で遊んだり、蝋像館を訪れたりします。

テーマ：「溶ける」

制作者： zep

Lexaloffle BBS でプレイ

mabbees は今回のジャムで多数の音楽を制作しました。制作過程については、こちらのブログ記事「祭り」テーマのゲーム向けに、無料の音楽アセットパックも配布しています。

Matsuri Music をダウンロード

私は運営に時間が取られ、最後の瞬間まで何か作りたいと思い、「ジャム用の 8×8 ピクセルアート素材パック」 を作成しました（ジャム＝音楽＋食べ物の掛け合わせです）。非商用プロジェクトで自由に使ってください！

MATSURI // JAM 8×8 ピクセルアート をダウンロード

またやりましょう

今回のジャムはとても楽しく、参加者同士が新しいつながりを作れました。こうした場は、みんなが安心して自分らしく振る舞い、ちょっとした“ばかげた”ことに挑戦できる貴重な空間です。

今後、東京でゲームジャムを開催する際のノウハウや、会場確保・言語の壁を越える方法などを書いたジン(zine)を作ろうかと考えています。興味がある方がいればぜひ教えてください！

改めて、参加してくれた皆さん、本当にありがとう！次回も楽しみにしています 😊

すべての記事を見る。

How I made my own chat stickers

2025-07-02T00:00:00Z

Some time ago, I made 24 chat stickers for some little eggbunny characters named Mochi (white) and Mugi (brown). They're available on Signal, Telegram, and LINE below.

I recently found my original files for these stickers and wanted to write up my learnings. This project started as a way to learn how to batch export illustrations in Procreate. I'd planned for only six bunnies as an experiment; but the full stickers ended up being eight times that (24 stickers in 2 color variations).

Since folks seem to like my rabbit drawings (it's slimebunny is one of my most drawn characters in ArtFight), I thought folks would like to see more of the sticker set and some of my reflections on it.

First is the obvious...

Stickers are fun to make and fun to use

I use these stickers on the regular. It's a part of my daily routine to look at my own art, and that makes me smile. It's been helpful in reminding my inner critic that yes, I actually do make art people enjoy.

I hope if other folks are using them, they are enjoying them, too.

Making an outline brush made making the text a lot easier

This brush really helped me make some of the handmade text I have in my stickers. In Procreate, it's easy to make an outline brush—I used the Calligraphy Brush as a base, so it has a nice, thick outline.

My tutorial was in Japanese, but here's one in English for folks that are curious.

A snag I ran into while making the text was that the outline brush often at its smallest setting was still too big for my canvas; so I made a new layer, wrote the text at a larger size, and shrunk it.

An example of the outline pen.

LINE stickers cannot have the same sticker in two sets

LINE checks to make sure each sticker in the series is "unique" whether that be in pose or coloring, so they flagged the "hot" sticker for both Mugi and Mochi is a yellow egg melting on the sidewalk. I wasn't sure what to do with that feedback—the egg is funny, and I wanted to keep it.

So, only for the LINE version, I had to make an adjustment to the color so that the Sticker Shop would accept it as a "unique" sticker.

I understand that this is to prevent duplicates in the LINE store, but in my case it seemed rather unnecessary.

Often sometimes your funniest stickers will be the ones you use the least

After using these for a while, I've realized that most of my sticker usage is around inviting people to tea or coffee, expressing affection, and confirming something someone has said. These stickers are cute, but not as dynamic as my least used stickers.

I would love to have an excuse to use the "destroy the evidence" bunny.

Here's a playback video of my work on the stickers where you can see them go from sketches to their full glory. (~2 minutes)

It was a fun project. All these stickers are available for free or for a nominal fee of 120 yen. And, if you found this article inspiring or useful to you, consider tipping me on Ko-Fi.

CJ | Studio Terranova

Happy Late New Year

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What is PICO-8?

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Enough setup! Show me the games!

hanabi-shi

Taiko Terror

PICOGORI 2025

OMATSURI TD

Anxiety Festival

Bernie Visits the Wax Museum

Let's do it again!

PICOJAM 2025 アフターレポート

PICO‑8 とは？

PICOJAM はどうやって実現したの？

さあ、ゲームをご紹介いたしまーす！

hanabi‑shi

Taiko Terror

PICOGORI 2025

OMATSURI TD

Anxiety Festival

Bernie Visits the Wax Museum

またやりましょう

関連記事

How I made my own chat stickers

Stickers are fun to make and fun to use

Making an outline brush made making the text a lot easier

LINE stickers cannot have the same sticker in two sets

Often sometimes your funniest stickers will be the ones you use the least

Signal (free)

LINE Stickers (EN and JP, 120 yen)

Telegram (free)

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